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dangermousieTitle: Interlacings, 1/1
Fandom: Salaam-e-Ishq
Tech stuff: Somewhere between PG13 and R. I really really tried to make it more explicit, but I fail at pr0n. Sorry. 1190 words. Ashu/Tehzeeb
A/N: If you know me, you’d know that Ashu and Tehzeeb’s story would push every single one of the buttons I have. I mean it’s kdrama! In a Bollywood movie! With John Abraham and Vidya Balan! I couldn’t stop writing this in my head for two days, so here it is. It’s set after the end of the movie (hence spoilers) but before the little coda scene. I really really would like concrit. I mean it. Because it’s sort of an unusual format for me and I don't know if it works.
Warning: I think by its nature it spoils the outcome of this particular story.
He comes home and the place is dark. For a moment, he is in the grip of a familiar panic, something always in the back of his mind, like a nagging dull headache: not crippling but steadily there.
He remembers the look in her eyes, lost and unhappy, and he tries his best not to let her unhappiness reflect in his eyes. Sometimes he succeeds and is rewarded by a smile.
He feels that way every time she isn’t with him, and even though he tells himself he is being absurd, he still feels the need to pause when he walks into the bedroom on his tiptoes and sees her dark shape under the blanket and hears her even breathing in the quiet of the room.
And meeting people she doesn’t recognize and the quick, quick moment of panic and her reaching instinctively for his hand.
He sits on the edge of the bed, still quiet. She is buried in the blankets, wrapping them around her like a protective cocoon of sorts. All he can see is a bit of her forehead and the thick mess of her hair. For some reason it makes him feel ridiculously protective. So he sits. So he watches her sleep. Silly.
She doesn’t really run any more because she doesn’t know the landscape, and he finds her fretting over the dead end alley that she insists shouldn’t be there so he tells her it will all be all right.
In the morning, he feels all sorts of tired and that is why he doesn’t control himself as well as he must (though he should), when she walks out and up to him. Fairly close, as he is making tea in the small kitchen in a futile effort to wake up.
She relearns the city, street by street, and their house, room by room. She rediscovers spices and her favorite hair brush and her love for the color blue.
So there they are. There you have it. She is fresh with sleep, mussed and warm and she is standing right there. Smiling up at him, with newly clear eyes.
He finds her looking through their pictures album and he isn’t sure whether to be hopeful or terrified. But he notices she is touching the pictures and she isn’t crying, not yet, so he relaxes, just a bit.
He tries hard but he can’t help it and he reaches to touch her. Her cheek, gentle, uncertain. She stills. He is about to remove his hands, to revert into apology and awkwardness and self control but she moves: graceful graceless and he feels her lips on his.
She likes to hold hands now, and hers are always slightly cooler than his. She doesn’t interlace the fingers though, not yet. Not the way she’d do and then pull him to her. He remembers not to remember.
A kiss. A bit uncertain and lopsided: half on his mouth and half not. And her hands are touching him back and he is less uncertain now, and…
She is reading in bed, feet bunched up. It’s a book she’s read a dozen times before. She hasn’t forgotten it. She just likes rereading
She reaches to raise her arms above her head as she struggles out of her shirt and he finds he is breathing so fast he is dizzy with it. And he wants to slow down: to slow it down, to slow down himself. He finds he can’t. Or won’t.
He catches her humming, tuneless and not very good, a song that was playing on the radio a week before, some hit movie track. He doesn’t let her know he heard but she probably figures it out when she finds the CD, still in its shrink-wrap, on the windowsill the next day.
There is a place, the hollow of her throat, forbidden territory so recently now, familiar terrain of before, and he wants to reach out and trace it with his tongue.
When they walk in the park one morning, she tugs at his sleeve at the sight of the ice-cream stand. Chocolate for her, vanilla for him. In the hot weather, his is melting much faster than he can possibly eat it (though this doesn’t seem to be a problem for her. Her cone is all gone already) and he ends up with a sticky mess all over his hands. She laughs up at him and he feels an urge to buy another cone and just to hold it up in the sun.
He does, and the noise she makes is something he could have never forgotten and should have never remembered. And he picks her up and as he is carrying her, real in his arms at last, if his hands are shaking just a little, who’s to know but her and him?
And he feels protective and proud, all at once, the first time she comes back to work for real, and the sight of her fiddling with the pencils on her desk, in an absent-minded fashion, is the happiest he’s felt for weeks.
Once on the bed, they have to pause to kick off the blankets which are horrendously in the way, and then her hair gets entangled in the wristband of his watch and in the not-hurry to disentangle the pillows fall off. So she giggles and so does he. The uncertainty in her eyes is matched by the uncertainty in his.
There is a juice stain on her sleeve and she dabs at it futily with her napkin. The exasperation is so familiar he wants to kiss the frown away. He offers her his own napkin instead.
The uncertainty is not visible when the eyes are closed. Her eyelids drift down as he leans in. So he kisses them and then kisses lower. And lower still.
Flowers? Impulse. She hugs him and mouths thanks. And hugs him again.
They are tangled closer than is normally possible but it is still not enough. It will never be enough. It will have to do.
She cooks his favorite dish and when he asks her how she knew (and then wishes he hadn’t blurted it out), she tells him she found the recipe in one of her books, with the dish name underlined.
Her hands on his back, nails lightly scraping. He wants them to scrape harder. He succeeds.
One morning, she is struggling with the clasps in the back and she asks him to button her up. He thinks he’s touched her skin then, once or twice, instead of the buttons. She makes no comment and he doesn’t either.
She opens her eyes, still slightly unfocused, breathing not back to normal. He kisses her smile. What he knows he will keep with him the most, is the possessive way she throws her arm around him as her world spirals back towards sleep. Possessive. Claiming him as hers. Reciprocal move. Mirror move. Recognizing herself as his.
He can see himself reflected in her eyes again. A reflection that makes him real.
He drifts off and for the first time in months it is enough.
Fandom: Salaam-e-Ishq
Tech stuff: Somewhere between PG13 and R. I really really tried to make it more explicit, but I fail at pr0n. Sorry. 1190 words. Ashu/Tehzeeb
A/N: If you know me, you’d know that Ashu and Tehzeeb’s story would push every single one of the buttons I have. I mean it’s kdrama! In a Bollywood movie! With John Abraham and Vidya Balan! I couldn’t stop writing this in my head for two days, so here it is. It’s set after the end of the movie (hence spoilers) but before the little coda scene. I really really would like concrit. I mean it. Because it’s sort of an unusual format for me and I don't know if it works.
Warning: I think by its nature it spoils the outcome of this particular story.
He comes home and the place is dark. For a moment, he is in the grip of a familiar panic, something always in the back of his mind, like a nagging dull headache: not crippling but steadily there.
He remembers the look in her eyes, lost and unhappy, and he tries his best not to let her unhappiness reflect in his eyes. Sometimes he succeeds and is rewarded by a smile.
He feels that way every time she isn’t with him, and even though he tells himself he is being absurd, he still feels the need to pause when he walks into the bedroom on his tiptoes and sees her dark shape under the blanket and hears her even breathing in the quiet of the room.
And meeting people she doesn’t recognize and the quick, quick moment of panic and her reaching instinctively for his hand.
He sits on the edge of the bed, still quiet. She is buried in the blankets, wrapping them around her like a protective cocoon of sorts. All he can see is a bit of her forehead and the thick mess of her hair. For some reason it makes him feel ridiculously protective. So he sits. So he watches her sleep. Silly.
She doesn’t really run any more because she doesn’t know the landscape, and he finds her fretting over the dead end alley that she insists shouldn’t be there so he tells her it will all be all right.
In the morning, he feels all sorts of tired and that is why he doesn’t control himself as well as he must (though he should), when she walks out and up to him. Fairly close, as he is making tea in the small kitchen in a futile effort to wake up.
She relearns the city, street by street, and their house, room by room. She rediscovers spices and her favorite hair brush and her love for the color blue.
So there they are. There you have it. She is fresh with sleep, mussed and warm and she is standing right there. Smiling up at him, with newly clear eyes.
He finds her looking through their pictures album and he isn’t sure whether to be hopeful or terrified. But he notices she is touching the pictures and she isn’t crying, not yet, so he relaxes, just a bit.
He tries hard but he can’t help it and he reaches to touch her. Her cheek, gentle, uncertain. She stills. He is about to remove his hands, to revert into apology and awkwardness and self control but she moves: graceful graceless and he feels her lips on his.
She likes to hold hands now, and hers are always slightly cooler than his. She doesn’t interlace the fingers though, not yet. Not the way she’d do and then pull him to her. He remembers not to remember.
A kiss. A bit uncertain and lopsided: half on his mouth and half not. And her hands are touching him back and he is less uncertain now, and…
She is reading in bed, feet bunched up. It’s a book she’s read a dozen times before. She hasn’t forgotten it. She just likes rereading
She reaches to raise her arms above her head as she struggles out of her shirt and he finds he is breathing so fast he is dizzy with it. And he wants to slow down: to slow it down, to slow down himself. He finds he can’t. Or won’t.
He catches her humming, tuneless and not very good, a song that was playing on the radio a week before, some hit movie track. He doesn’t let her know he heard but she probably figures it out when she finds the CD, still in its shrink-wrap, on the windowsill the next day.
There is a place, the hollow of her throat, forbidden territory so recently now, familiar terrain of before, and he wants to reach out and trace it with his tongue.
When they walk in the park one morning, she tugs at his sleeve at the sight of the ice-cream stand. Chocolate for her, vanilla for him. In the hot weather, his is melting much faster than he can possibly eat it (though this doesn’t seem to be a problem for her. Her cone is all gone already) and he ends up with a sticky mess all over his hands. She laughs up at him and he feels an urge to buy another cone and just to hold it up in the sun.
He does, and the noise she makes is something he could have never forgotten and should have never remembered. And he picks her up and as he is carrying her, real in his arms at last, if his hands are shaking just a little, who’s to know but her and him?
And he feels protective and proud, all at once, the first time she comes back to work for real, and the sight of her fiddling with the pencils on her desk, in an absent-minded fashion, is the happiest he’s felt for weeks.
Once on the bed, they have to pause to kick off the blankets which are horrendously in the way, and then her hair gets entangled in the wristband of his watch and in the not-hurry to disentangle the pillows fall off. So she giggles and so does he. The uncertainty in her eyes is matched by the uncertainty in his.
There is a juice stain on her sleeve and she dabs at it futily with her napkin. The exasperation is so familiar he wants to kiss the frown away. He offers her his own napkin instead.
The uncertainty is not visible when the eyes are closed. Her eyelids drift down as he leans in. So he kisses them and then kisses lower. And lower still.
Flowers? Impulse. She hugs him and mouths thanks. And hugs him again.
They are tangled closer than is normally possible but it is still not enough. It will never be enough. It will have to do.
She cooks his favorite dish and when he asks her how she knew (and then wishes he hadn’t blurted it out), she tells him she found the recipe in one of her books, with the dish name underlined.
Her hands on his back, nails lightly scraping. He wants them to scrape harder. He succeeds.
One morning, she is struggling with the clasps in the back and she asks him to button her up. He thinks he’s touched her skin then, once or twice, instead of the buttons. She makes no comment and he doesn’t either.
She opens her eyes, still slightly unfocused, breathing not back to normal. He kisses her smile. What he knows he will keep with him the most, is the possessive way she throws her arm around him as her world spirals back towards sleep. Possessive. Claiming him as hers. Reciprocal move. Mirror move. Recognizing herself as his.
He can see himself reflected in her eyes again. A reflection that makes him real.
He drifts off and for the first time in months it is enough.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 12:05 pm (UTC)I love how you have Ashu watching her and cataloguing her successes and how she comes to him and makes that crucial move that takes them to bed.
(Has John Abraham ever cried so much in a movie? And does anyone look better doing it? I don't think so.)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 02:12 pm (UTC)I confess to crying in the movie theater too: that last scene in Akshaye's house really got me. And the scene where he was looking through the bodies. In a lot of ways, theirs was the most realistic story (if you replaced with amnesia with some other disability that is) of the ones in the movie...
Has John Abraham ever cried so much in a movie? And does anyone look better doing it? I don't think so.)
No and no. And I am so happy because after Baabul (where he really just stood around like a really gorgeous block of wood, the only movie I really didn't care for him in), I was wondering if he could play just a romantic lead, without any of the tough guy stuff, but hey, lookie, he can and can do it so beautifully.
I really loved Vidya and John together. They have such natural, sweet chemistry. I hope they make another movie together.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 02:30 pm (UTC)And, gawd, John was SO wasted in Baabul. That movie was utterly craptacular and all I remember thinking is, "THIS is your best friend and you fell in love with some sleazy rich punk?" I'm sorry, but if I grew up with a guy that looked like John and was that sweet...that would be it for me. And he did look ever so pretty playing the piano during "Bebasi Dard Ka Alam."
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 03:26 pm (UTC)Oh, I loved that scene, melodrama be damned. I think it was the fact that he clearly wasn't even expecting (not even a little bit, in his heart) any other reaction from his father at all, and was willing to even use this in order to try to get Vidya to remember. The way he was willing to totally negate himself. It really runs with the whole theme of him being willing to do anything for her, putting her first (because the fact that he was able to just beg regardless as opposed to unfilially yelling at him? Brownie points galore).
I actually loved that his father was a bastard. In a sense that a man who disowned his child for marrying someone of different faith is unlikely to suddenly mellow out and forgive everyone and hugs all around. I am used to it by now but it still mildly bugs me to see the evil parent forgive/relent at the end as a deus ex machina. How realistic is that? I am thinking of the last scenes of Ishq and Yaadein and similar. Ugh.
But here, that felt real. This is a deeply bitter man and of course he would gloat. When he said that Ashu should be thankful that Tehzeeb forgot because now he can remedy his mistake? As Tehzeeb is standing right there? Utterly horrible but totally something someone like that would say.
Re: Baabul. Now, I am a Salman fangirl and I loved him in the movie. This said, yes, Rani is blind. Her best friend is John Abraham? Who is clearly crazy for her and is a good person and everything? How does that work that she doesn't see him as a guy? How? Also, don't even get me started on the regressive message in the movie. That whole disaster of a flick should have been about her starting the movie as a widow and learning to love again, not the mess that it was.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 11:43 pm (UTC)Salaam-e-Ishq just hit more emotional buttons and felt more resonant because the characters weren't quite so caricature-like. Like your example of Ashu's father not pulling the typical parental redemption, "aao, beti," gag where they'd welcome Tehzeeb with open arms.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 07:07 pm (UTC)Heh. You must have really enjoyed Tere Naam then :D
I agree on emotional resonance. SeI was a masala movie, but it clearly felt real within those confines of the genre.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 11:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-11 12:33 am (UTC)The last time I liked Salman in a movie, that was in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. And before that...we're talking the '90s cheesefest stuff like Karan Arjun and Ek Ladka Ek Ladki.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-04 07:26 pm (UTC)Question: What exactly happened in that coda scene. Were they just happily in love all over again like before, or did she actually get her memory back?
no subject
Date: 2007-06-06 03:31 am (UTC)I don't think she ever got her memory back. He just made her fall for him all over again. Which is both beautiful and sad.